Slumber

Road Rash and Burnout. I could die happy.

I rarely ever use Rutger, and Henning is only ever a moderate annoyance at most. He's tougher than most bosses are at that stage of the game, but he's far from the toughest guy around. Really not getting where this "But you have to use Rutger!" thing is coming from.

Boy, if only this story had a happy ending. But I imagine it will play out in a very similar fashion.

Then I advise that you don't read the comments on the Kotaku article about his death. A lot of people are hung up that he didn't put up with Brianna Wu's bullshit, and that he was one of the people that got latched onto when GamerGate picked up Steam... Even though he denounced those people, said that GG went far beyond what he was trying to say, and spent the rest of his life fighting Nazis, the alt-right, and in general the crowd that Gamer Gate attracted. And they use these things to essentially say "He deserved this" or "Why should I care that a piece of shit nobody died". As a liberal, I hate liberals sometimes. A lot of them preach tolerance and empathy, but the moment somebody does something they disagree with, they're less than human in their eyes and deserve to die. Rapists and people who blurt out something inappropriate once or twice are tossed into the same fire. TB spent the last 5ish years of his life on the side of these people, and they're upset that he called out a hypocritical human pomeranian and that he started an idea that eventually spiraled out of his control. It really is frustrating. I wouldn't even wish cancer on actual Nazis like Richard Spencer. I want him to live a lonely, miserable life in obscurity. But not cancer.

I wish I could share the optimism. Until I see what FE16 is, I am pretty positive that the trajectory of the franchise is one that veers hard away from what got me hooked on the franchise to begin with. If the series is going somewhere where I can only bring myself to care about remakes, it'll effectively be dead to me. At that point, I don't care even in the slightest about Awakening and Fates "saving" the series.

Yeah, his cancer came back and the treatments didn't work anymore. He announced this about a month ago, and was retiring from game commentary because he didn't know how much time he'd have left.

Zihark is a great subversion to the usual "Edgy myrmidon mercenary defects and helps you". As a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who just wants to help and be friends with Laguz. He's like a better Joshua. Unfortunately Swordmasters aren't super amazing, but PoR is easy and Zihark can pull his weight.

I disagreed with him on a lot of stuff, but I always felt that he was an overall positive force in what he did. When he said the cancer treatments were no longer effective a few weeks ago, I thought there'd be maybe a few months for him. RIP

That's another part where SMT is different than Persona narratively, where you're definitively the good guys, and while there are grays leading up to the climax, it almost always boils down to black and white in the end.

I can't say it was ever as relentless or as oppressive as your case, but I had a pretty similar breaking point. I have chronic migraines, and have had them ever since I was 5 years old. Throughout most of my elementary school days, I was mostly treated like a normal kid, just one who had to sit inside with his head down sometimes during recess, went to the nurse often, and was absent at least once a week. No problem connecting with people or anything, I just had to be left out of some things. By middle school, kids were starting to learn how to be genuinely mean and ruthless. The middle school I went to was pretty rough, even for kids without problems, but I became a target for having a chronic illness. I'd be absent for periods of time and I'd come back to dumb rumors and stuff being spread about me. The craziest being stuff like "Oh, he has herpes". Words didn't often get to me so much. Eventually, since it was middle school and a bunch of hormonal boys were being packed in a tiny building, it got violent. I got sucker punched a few times and I ran out of patience. I got it in my head that they picked me out because I was gone and they saw me as weak, so any time there was a chance things might escalate, I'd fight. On top of this, I was on a lot of medicines, including cocktails of depressants and anti-depressants as doctors tried to figure out anything that might relieve my migraines, as nothing was working. I was going through puberty, my mind was out of whack, school was hostile, and a lot of time I was at home, I was in pain and had no relief. By about 7th grade, I had hit a point and took some tanto my dad bought at a flea market, and planned on doing... something to myself with it. I kept it in my room for about a year. Every time I was at my worst, I always felt immense guilt because I knew my family would feel worse than I ever did if I hurt or killed myself. When I returned to my classes after a semester on medical leave in the middle of my last year of middle school, I was in a slightly better mental state, and just let everything slide, hoping that middle school would be over and high school would be a more stable environment. I took myself off my meds and just tried to stay optimistic. Thankfully everyone mellowed out by high school, and most of the people who targeted me the most went to different schools, or were placed in remedial classes and I never saw them. I was back to being the kid who just had to sit with his head down sometimes and was absent about once a week. I can't say I recall any serious bullying during high school, and I was cool with pretty much everyone. I wish I could offer some advice, but you're correct in saying that I don't know the culture there. My general train of thought has always been "Ignore them, they'll move on", but if it has been going on since elementary school, then they clearly haven't and won't. I suppose that if you're going your own path, it might just be best to focus on that, and make connections with people where you can, and hopefully they can stay positive. Life outside of high school is much different. Once you're out, people tend to be more well adjusted, and you really only need to surround yourself with people you want to. If bullying persists in university or work, there are more serious ways to deal with it beyond hoping teachers do more than slaps on the wrist. Most colleges and work environments won't tolerate harassment like a high school will, where students are legally obligated to be there.

Persona 5 is very much a society-focused game. Though it's more poking critiques at modern society(The game boils down to the idea that just following the hivemind of society and harmful traditional values is ultimately bad, and that change is better for society) than SMT, which in general is more about looking at the worst humanity as a whole has to offer. I guess you're right though, since Persona often tackles themes and how they impact the individual(Persona 4 was about the media and how it affected people).

I think it has to do with tone. Honestly(Depending on the game) the mainline SMT games don't tackle much heavier human themes than Persona games do. But the mainline games have a weight to the presentation. The Persona games are a lot lighter and more bubbly, but they still deal with some heavy themes. People love Persona 5 despite

I don't mind the quirks themselves. I hate the main gimmicks. They're almost inverse problems, though. Whereas the gimmicks are annoying and intrusive, the quirks are almost non-existant and don't really matter to the characters. Chrom breaking stuff comes up... Once? I think? I don't even know what the fuck a "skin diver" is, or what it has to do with Say'ri, and I wouldn't know about such a thing if it wasn't written somewhere.

I hate to say it, but even the mainline SMT/spinoffs that aren't Persona probably wouldn't happen as often(Or possibly even at all) without the Persona games. Persona 3/4 came out during a time when there was a heavy JRPG drought(The late 00s/early 10s were an awful time to be a fan of the genre), and JRPGs in general were not of major interest. I don't see many of Atlus' other SMT efforts being noticed if it weren't for the newfound attention brought to them by the Persona games, which were pretty goddamn huge by JRPG standards and were *the* most noteworthy JRPGs during that era. The even larger success of Persona 5 ensures that Atlus has a pretty large cashflow to allow them to keep making smaller titles. I don't see the Persona games as taking over Megaten. I see them as the products that ensure that we get more Megaten. So long as SMTV is like SMT, and not like Persona, I don't think there's any reason to worry about this. And considering Persona 5 itself was more SMT than Persona 3 and 4, I don't think we have to worry about Atlus neglecting the mainline franchise or anything.

That's why I said "borderline". There's nobody on earth who would directly use Silver Weapons in Fates, though.

So you'd rather have weapons that are borderline unusable over ones that are usable and have to be replaced?

Yes. The games without durability, I haven't enjoyed how weapons were handled, especially Fates. I do think that there should be way more options when it comes to repairing weapons, however. Weapons with less than 5 uses left probably take up a lot of inventory space for many players.

I actually saw Fates as a bit if a step up in that regard. Still really, really bad, but the amount of supports where people said absolutely nothing of substance felt cut down compared to Awakening. Well, for characters that weren't reprehensible. It was like, 90% fluff and filler compared to 95% fluff and filler.

No matter what they do, I don't want them to make it overly-dramatic, melodramatic, or too goofy. If they can keep it grounded and make it fit, they can do whatever they want. Obviously there are big emotional pieces, like with Sigurd's final confrontation with Arvis, but by and large, the lack of major dramatics helps sell how fucked Jugdral is. Everything has gone to shit, everyone is constantly trying to kill everyone else, and it's just the way of life.

Yeah, ever since Chrono Cross, I've gotten used to a large variety of accents in a translation to build out a world. DQ4's translation was absolutely fine to me, as by and large, the content of the game wasn't changed, it was just given a bit more personality.

I'd argue Selena is just as bad as Eldigan. Eldigan dies for really stupid reasons, but there are centuries of history behind his position. His family served as vassals to Chagall's. As dumb as it is for Eldigan to serve Chagall after Chagall basically just plainly states that he'll kill Eldigan the first chance he gets, to Eldigan's face, it's something that at least has precedence with other Camuses, even if Eldigan pushes it to the absolute extreme. Selena, on the flipside, fucks up just about everything else a Camus is supposed to be. She serves a lord she is deathly loyal to, despite also acknowledging that she should leave because the Vigarde she currently serves is literally a different Vigarde than the one who saved her, and Valter basically threatens her into staying in Vigarde's service. Then, despite doing actions she knows are wrong, steals Myrrh's Dragonstone and dies an incredibly undignified death, having never really shown any sort of regret for the actions that got her there. Beyond the semi-justified loyalty, a Camus is supposed to be a morally virtuous and noble figure to the end. Eldigan fucks up the first part, being loyal to a fault for bad reasons. Selena fucks up the second part, as she essentially dies a flaky coward whose final actions could have easily lead to the death of a little girl. No matter how many people(Myrrh included) say Selena is a good, noble person, she definitely does not die that way. Glen would have been way closer to a proper Camus, but Valter kills him before he can turn into that.

That would be between 4 and 8. 8 on the 3DS is really good(As is 7 on the 3DS).

FF4 is where they really started focusing on character/plot writing. And FF4's cast is pretty solid as a real "first attempt"(Not gonna count FF2 here).

Yeah, there are definitely ways to get around having bad characters, like simply not having static main characters. If a game can carry itself well enough, it can pull that off really well. Dragon Quest 3 is one of my favorites in the series, and it's all generated NPCs. Unlike Dragon Quest 7 and 8, which have characters I really like, Dragon Quest 3 manages to sit alongside them as my 3 favorite games in the series, simply because Dragon Quest 3 excels at something that in general makes the DQ games stand out from other JRPGs. It's probably the best at feeling like a grand adventure. Which, for people who haven't played and don't really know what Dragon Quest is about, I think is worth going over. Dragon Quest is generally a lot more open and less structured than most other JRPG franchises. Whereas a lot of other JRPG franchises tend to be very rigidly structured "Point A to Point B" kind of stuff with a ton of side quests and stuff, Dragon Quest kind of obscures this a bit. There's still point A to point B stuff, especially in more recent DQ games, but it's never shoved in your face quite as much as something like a Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest is more of a "We have to stop this evil jester! He went east. Figure the rest for yourself." kind of game. It leaves a lot for you to figure out for yourself, and not in an annoying way. Most of the time you'll just just be off killing monsters, following the road without a real lead to be had, and you'll see a town and sometimes suddenly you stumble onto the plot. Or maybe you explore a cave and you just randomly find a key item to a quest that you haven't even started yet. It's a very unique feel that I don't many modern JRPGs capture quite so much.

Pet peeve #1 is bad characters. The story could suck, the voice acting can be bad, and even some questionable game design is all somewhat acceptable(Though a combination of those things can sink any game) as long as the characters I'm following for dozens of hours are worth caring about. Final Fantasy X and XIII are two of my least favorite games in the franchise simply because of how loathsome I find a large portion of the casts in those games. I couldn't bring myself to really like the improvements to the traditional turn-based combat X brought, and I couldn't like the... hmm, I'm drawing a blank on anything good XIII did, but the characters, first and foremost, are my biggest complaint with XIII. Something about the way Motomu Toriyama directs his game is just awful, and it hits the characters of his games the hardest. While we're on the subject of ToS, part of the reason I can't get into it is because of how much I hate the "idiot shonen protagonist" archetype, and the game immediately tosses a bunch of other character cliches I hate at you.